On the cover of Chinua Achebe's latest book is a quote from Nelson Mandela, "the writer in whose company the prison walls fell down". Mandela read the Nigerian's novels when he was in prison and on his release invited Achebe to come to South Africa to meet him. Achebe was in a wheelchair following a road accident in 1990 but his daughter told me how the two old men looked at each other, almost in recognition, before Mandela, the older by 12 years, greeted him as "my little brother".

Their faces are alike and their voice pitch is similar but they also share a dignified seriousness that suddenly cracks open with laughter and love of humanity. Sadly there is no record of that meeting but I suspect it ranged over the same themes that fill this book of essays by Africa's premier novelist. Premier in every sense. He was the first to achieve global status and his five novels remain the yardstick of African literature. Another book -- on his own Igbo people's take on the meaning of life -- is promised later this year but Achebe will be 80 in November and his last novel, Anthills of the Savannah, was published in 1987. [read]

Read the review of The Education of a British-Protected Child by Chinua Achebe.